Hendricks was greeted at the casino entrance by a smiling bellhop. An old-timey marquee awash in the light of a thousand bulbs gave way to an interior whose decor was as loud and jarring as the din rising from its endless banks of clanking slots.
Purkhiser’s ceremony was supposed to take place in a banquet hall just off the gaming floor called the Fountain Room. Today, the Fountain Room featured two performances by a ventriloquist-lunch and dinner, complete with buffet. Later tonight, it hosted a country act Hendricks had never heard of.
Hendricks bought a ticket to the ventriloquist’s buffet- fifteen dollars, food included. The clink of flatware on glasses filled the hall as he entered, and the tables-round and draped in coarse white linens-were about three-quarters full. Though the show had yet to begin, the buffet’d been open twenty minutes by the time he arrived, so the line was short. The buffet ran half the length of the room along the left-hand side. Hendricks got in line-a good excuse to walk the length of the room and scan the crowd.
The room was big and dimly lit, with plush carpeting of green and red and floor-to-ceiling curtains on each wall. The stage was small, set up at the far end of the room from the main entrance. There was a bar in the corner to the right of the stage, people crowded all around. The only points of entry were the main doors through which Hendricks had arrived and two emergency exits, one on the right-hand wall and another behind the stage. At each of the emergency exits was a security guard-husky, uniformed, armed. Another two security guards stood offstage at either side.
Hendricks didn’t like it.
Assuming the setup on Thursday was the same, the hall was too full-of people and furniture both. It had too few exits and too much security. Not to mention the half-domes of tinted plastic that protruded downward at regular intervals from the ceiling-security cameras, watching every inch of the place.
But like it or not, he had six million reasons to make it work.
So he fixed himself a plate and grabbed a seat up near the front, where a corner table was vacant by virtue of the fact that it afforded an awkward view of the stage. Fine by him. He didn’t care to see the performance, and from his perch in the nine-o’clock position at the table, he had sight lines on the bar; the crowd seated at the tables; the room’s main entrance; and, in the reflection of the chromed water pitcher on his table, the buffet patrons behind him.
As Hendricks settled into his seat and draped his napkin across his lap, the overhead lights dimmed, signaling that the show was about to begin. Hendricks didn’t pay any mind to the tired old man who took the stage with his dummy.
He had a job to do.
Albert Tuschbaum was having a lousy day.
For one, his throat was killing him. Thirty shows in thirty days will do that to you. Well, that and the sinus infection he’d picked up somewhere between here and San Antonio. He’d spent the last month snaking upward through the country on Greyhound after Greyhound: north on I-35 to Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas, and Oklahoma City, then east on 44 to Tulsa and Joplin. To get to the gig in Branson, he got stuck on a local bus instead of an express, which meant stops every other mile it seemed, and damn near twice the travel time-all while wedged between a grubby, ponytailed biker-type too long since his last shower, and a woman whose snot-crusted toddler kept coughing like he had the plague. On the leg from Branson to Springfield, they’d lost his dummy, Mickey-though they claimed they’d loaded him into the luggage compartment before departing, he wasn’t there when they arrived-which meant he had to go onstage with the backup dummy he kept stuffed into the bottom of his other suitcase, whose threadbare clothes and chipping paint seemed to mirror Albert’s own sorry state. And from Springfield to his Pendleton’s gigs, his bus’s toilet had backed up, meaning that he not only couldn’t pee-his cholesterol meds made him piss like a racehorse-but he also couldn’t eat, the foul stench of human waste ensuring the lunch he bought at the station went untouched. Hell, he’d been in town for hours now, and still he felt as though the awful reek of chemical toilet clung to his clothes, his hair, his skin.
Then again, maybe that was the smell of his career.
How could he have let it come to this? Time was, he played the Vegas strip, warming up the sold-out crowds for acts like Tom Jones and Neil Diamond. Twice, he’d appeared on Carson, once even getting invited over to the couch. But that was years ago-decades. Two divorces and countless hip flasks of Canadian Club. The booze had eaten through his stomach, his marriage, and his reputation, etching its mark deep into the lines of his face, into the broken corpuscles draped like lace across his nose and cheeks. It drove away his wife and friends, and left his children flinching every time the phone rang, not knowing if the voice at the other end would be that of their maudlin old man, or the inevitable rote sympathy of some faraway police officer, informing them they needn’t flinch any longer.
Then Grace came and changed everything.
Five weeks early, she showed up. Her lungs were weak, her body bruised from the trauma of early labor and a breech presentation. Ultimately, the doctors were forced to perform an emergency Cesarean on Albert’s daughter Rachel-herself the baby of the family. In the end, mother and daughter were fine, though the first few days were touch-and-go for both. And though Albert’s ex managed to put aside years of heartache and resentment to wire him money for an airline ticket so he could be there should both or neither wake, Albert wasn’t man enough to make the trip-the thought of losing both his daughter and his grandchild in one fell swoop proved too much. He stopped off at some shitty cocktail lounge on his way to the airport for one steadying drink and woke up days later in a flea-ridden motel, the rumble of landing aircraft shaking the four empty bottles on his nightstand, with no memory of what had transpired in the interim-without even knowing if his child and grandchild had survived.
That’s when he decided to get clean.
The first month was the worst-the shakes, the sweats, the horrid clarity that ensured each unendurable minute proceeded directly to the next, with no fast-forward, no blissful blackout time-jump. Gone was the soft amber whiskey filter through which he experienced his life, and all he was left with was the cold reality of the pathetic existence it had become.
So he resolved to change it. To make amends. To glue back together what he’d broken, as best he could.
Now he peddled his dying art in two-bit rooms in two-bit towns, to crowds who didn’t give a shit if he moved his lips or not, let alone said anything funny. But he didn’t do it for the laughs, or the accolades, or even for himself. He did it for Grace. Albert was determined that when she was old enough to look at him with any kind of understanding, it would be love he saw reflected there, not pity or disappointment.
It was a damn good thing he didn’t do it for himself. Because these assholes in the crowd wouldn’t know talent if it got up in front of them and sang “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” while gargling a glass of water.
Take the fellow stage right, for example. The wannabe cowboy in the Stetson and the BluBlockers, sitting to one side of an otherwise empty table and pointedly ignoring him. Guy’d barely even glanced his way when Albert took the stage-and he’d spent the whole time since staring at the rest of the audience. Apparently, every other person here was more interesting than Albert’s set.
Then there was the old-timer who’d fallen asleep in his mashed potatoes, a rail-thin guy with a wispy horseshoe of too-long white hair and a week’s dusting of white stubble. Albert saw him swaying gently as if to music only he could hear as Albert was going into his knot/not riff on “Who’s on First?” Then his eyes closed, and down he went. Albert was inclined to give that guy a pass-it was doubtless drink and not boredom that knocked him out, and as the sixmonth chip in Albert’s front pocket reminded him, drink